Traditionally, gambling games, like slot machines, were mechanical in nature and included arrangements of levers, gears, springs and the like that would be set into motion when a player pulled, for example, a slot machine level arm. While such gambling games were entertaining, all gambling games had essentially the same configuration, thereby not providing players with a variety of gaming configurations.
The advent of the electronic gambling game based on a processing unit, such as a microprocessor, enabled gambling games to have longer lifespans because there were fewer mechanical parts to wear out. Additionally, the variety of gambling games increased because the processing units could be programmed in various manners to provide a selection of gambling games. For example, while mechanical gambling games were typically configured as slot machines, electronic gambling games could be configured as slot machines, poker games, keno games, bingo games or any other suitable styles of gambling games that software and game designers could envision. Today, nearly all gambling games are electronic and are based on processing units.
Gaming boards oversee the regulation of the gambling industry by breaking a geographic area into a number of jurisdictions. Most any machine implementing a gambling game in a particular jurisdiction must be inspected, approved and certified by a gaming board of that jurisdiction before the machine may be placed in service within a casino in that jurisdiction. The certification process may be a long process that increases the development cycle time of gambling game innovation.
As will be readily appreciated, the requirements for gambling games vary between jurisdictions. For example, a gaming machine may include a number of menus that may be used by service personnel and the type and contents of such menus may be regulated by the gaming boards. The gaming boards of various jurisdictions may impose different menu requirements, which results in a number of different software instruction sets providing menu systems.
Because each gambling game must be inspected and approved by a gaming board, any software changes within the gambling game necessitate recertification of the game. Accordingly, because menuing software, among other things, changes between jurisdictions, each machine having different menu software would have to be recertified. Additionally, menu changes within a jurisdiction also necessitate recertification.